Here we are.
I'm outside the Greening the Desert Project.
Comes all the way down this wall
from that distinct rock behind me.
And right across the road here,
this is Abla's little garden,
which is racing along as a very successful project
as she's running on the fast track of our example over here.
So there's a few people here today as we've got an open day,
and our project goes on down here.
And our neighbors next door have quite a lot of sheep,
or across the road here
you can see,
there's quite a lot of animals here.
We get a bit of extra manure.
And then, here, we have a lot of people
as well outside our cafe.
So this is the entrance to our cafe,
and our cafe manager and other people
who are helping us out here.
And then the project finishes,
but then we've got one neighbor between us,
and we have Hile's house next door.
Let me take it in here and show you what this is like,
if I can get past Jackie the dog.
Oh, Jackie, you going to let me in?
I hope so. Come on.
That's a good dog.
Come on through.
Don't eat the cameraman.
Now, this is a beautiful project in here.
This is an extension, a neighbor.
And just look at this.
It's older than Abla's project by about one year.
Young family with seven children.
And it's going really well.
It's a distinct, little food forest.
It's all kinds of species in here.
And of course, they have chickens,
which are running the fertility,
but before we look at the chickens,
because they're down the bottom,
let's have a look.
They've got a bit of solar energy here.
So they've copied our system, put in solar panels.
And in through here,
they have a production garden.
In fact, they have two production gardens.
They've got wicking beds, just been replanted.
And here, the winter garden's underway.
And this will be going into full production now.
Now that the temperature's cooling down.
And this is an income generator.
There's no question about that.
This is a very productive garden as it goes into the winter.
So let me show you the food forest.
As we come down this way, there's a few beehives around,
and a really nice, straightforward food forest.
And it's a real mixture of trees,
drip irrigation all the way through,
desert food forest honey,
little micro swales all the way through.
And down here, you get into the composting area.
There's bulk compost being made
and
some compost just been taken out.
And here's the chicken system.
So we've got the same sort of fertility generator happening
and another garden here.
So we have a second production garden
and winter plants just going in.
There's small tomatoes here.
It's been planted all out these last week,
but there's a larger crop of eggplant here.
So this is a real local system.
Nothing fancy but really good production.
It's actually a real boost to local income.
Plus, now you've got these sort of
almost like a permaculture cash crop scenario,
almost agricultural looking.
But then when you go around the garden,
it's also got very aesthetic sections.
I mean, we'll dodge through
the large family's wash in here .
But it's very pretty sections.
There's even a swimming pool.
So they put a swimming pool in,
but it's got no chlorine.
What they do is
they fill it up with irrigation water.
They let the kids swim in it for two or three or four days.
And then when it goes green like this,
they pump it on the garden.
So it's a multifunctional swimming pool.
So they'll pump this onto the garden.
They'll clean the pool
and fill it up again so the kids can swim.
We're going into winter,
so they're not going to swim that much.
It's going to function more like an irrigation tank
for the next few months.
We've got passion fruit all over the fence,
and it's coming up over the date palms.
The whole thing will be privacy screened
with passion fruit pretty soon.
And that's the type of thing
that we're providing for families.
We're providing beautiful environments
that are productive and even income generators.
So it's no wonder it's spreading out across the landscape.
There are many examples I'll show you,
and it's a pleasure to show you
what's actually happening with the permaculture extension
through gardens, neighbors,
the general environment, and schools.